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All month long we will feature brand-new Cool Avengers and X-Men Comic Book Moments in celebration of their fiftieth anniversaries this month. Here is an archive of all the past cool comic moments that I’ve featured so far over the years.

With the holiday, I missed day one, so we’re doubling up for day three. We start day three with Cannonball’s surprising fight with Gladiator in Uncanny X-Men #341 by Scott Lobdell, Joe Madureira and Tim Townsend…

The gist of the issue is that Gladiator shows up on Earth for the X-Men’s help. He teleports into a massive group of Christmas shoppers and grabs Cannonball. Cannonball doesn’t know he’s looking for their help (especially since the two have not exactly had a lot of interactions over the years) and he responds by trying to take Gladiator out of the way of the innocent bystanders. Gladiator then takes this as an affront and decides to quickly dismiss this pesky X-Man, which leads to a memorable fight…

What I love about this moment, besides Madureira’s dynamic layouts, is the fact that this dramatic, awesome, inspiring moment is only a momentary success…

So Gladiator would have then quickly dispatched Cannonball. But the success was in hanging with him at ALL. I like that. You get your “win” without actually having to make it a WIN win.

If you have suggestions for future editions of Cool Avengers/X-Men Comic Book Moments, drop me a line at bcronin@comicbookresources.com.